The Wicked Will Rise

TWENTY-FIVE


Inside, the palace was nothing like the place I’d gotten to know by heart when I’d been posing as one of Dorothy’s most loyal servants.

In fact, it was no place I’d ever been before, outside of a nightmare. At first, it was hard to even understand what I was looking at. The vast entry chamber we were in had been turned upside down and inside out. No. Scratch that—inside out and upside down implies a certain order to things, and here, it was like none of the normal rules of physics applied at all. Like something out of an M. C. Escher drawing, there were entire staircases that floated in midair, leading to nowhere, furniture suspended from the slanted walls, and, overhead, an entire jungle looked like it was growing out of the ceiling.

I had no idea what this was all about, but I knew, on instinct, that Lulu had been right about where we had to go. “The maze,” I said. It was the center of everything. It was where Oz had started. And now it was fighting back. “We have to get there.”

Nox wasn’t really listening. He appeared totally disoriented, like he didn’t remember who he was anymore, and was looking around desperately, with wild eyes, as if searching for any way out. There wasn’t one, at least as far as I could see. The door that we had just walked through had disappeared as soon as we’d stepped through it.

“Nox,” I said frantically, grabbing his hand. “Get yourself together. I know it’s hard, but we have to find Dorothy and Ozma. We don’t have a choice.”

“I . . . ,” he started to say. Then he just shook his head. He couldn’t make the words come out.

“I need you,” I said. “I can’t do this alone.”

Somehow, that seemed to have an effect. Nox bit his lip, nodded, and steeled himself. “Okay,” he said, taking a deep breath. “I can do it. It’s something about this place. It just seems . . . wrong. It’s messing with me.”

“I know,” I said, but I didn’t quite get why it was affecting him so much more than me. It was true that it was disorienting—I could barely see straight, and, when I took a step forward, found myself moving backward instead, like I was on rewind. The main problem was that I didn’t know how in the world we were going to find what we were looking for in all of this.

That is, I didn’t know until a flash of red in the corner of my eye attracted my attention, and I spun around to find the source: Dorothy.

Across the room, Dorothy had Ozma on one of her mind-control leashes and Dorothy was leading her up a moving staircase. They spiraled upward, toward a green door that hovered in midair what seemed like a mile above us. I wasn’t even sure how it went so far up—the ceilings didn’t seem all that high, but the way space seemed to be working in here, it obviously wasn’t worth it to try to puzzle it out.

“There,” I said, pulling Nox with me as I began to run. Or tried to run: the faster I tried to go, the more the strange physics of this place slowed me down, until it felt like I was moving through Jell-O. At this rate, Dorothy would get away long before I was able to catch up.

“Do you think you can teleport?” I asked Nox. It was a risk—who knew whether teleporting would even work in here, especially the way my magic had been working ever since we’d entered the city—but it was one I had to take.

“I can try,” he said, looking uncertain.

“Are you sure?”

He gulped. “I think so,” he said.

I didn’t believe him. But what else could I do? Dorothy hadn’t noticed me yet, but she was already halfway up the stairs. “We’ll do it together,” I said. Holding Nox’s hand tight enough to cut off circulation, I held my breath and took him with me into the Darklands.

As soon as I entered the shadows, I knew I had made a mistake. His hand began to slip out of my grip. It was like trying to hold water. But through the hazy screen that separated me from the world above, I could see that Dorothy was almost to the door that would take her out of here.

So I rose back up into reality. It had worked. I was only a few paces behind Dorothy now, and she still hadn’t noticed me.

But Nox was gone.

Ozma was already through the door, and Dorothy was stepping through it. Panicking, I looked over my shoulder, and saw Nox, still back on the ground where we’d started, gaping up at me with a look of abject terror on his face.

“Go!” he screamed. “I’ll catch up.”

I could have gone back for him. Instead, I dove through the green door after Dorothy a split second before it closed. I was standing on the edge of the palace’s grand, formal garden, near the hedge maze where Pete had once told me was the place Oz had been born.

Dorothy and Ozma were walking toward the maze.

Long ago, Pete had told me that Dorothy was terrified to enter it: there was something about it that scared her, something that told her she would never survive if she tried to make it through to the center. But now, with brainwashed Ozma leading the way for her, she seemed dead set on getting in.

The maze didn’t scare me. I had made it through before. I knew how to deal with it. But I also knew that if I tried to get through it again on my own, there was every chance that I’d get lost, or lose track of my targets for good.

I decided that right now, stealth was the best option. And so I shrouded myself in a misdirection charm so that Dorothy wouldn’t notice me creeping behind her. I wasn’t sure if it would work, but it couldn’t hurt. Ozma waved her scepter and opened up a gap in the hedges, and when she and Dorothy walked through it, I walked close behind them.

Ozma knew where she was going. She navigated the dark twists and turns of the maze without ever hesitating at which way to go. Every now and then, she paused at a place that didn’t even look like a path at all, waved her scepter again, and opened up yet another hidden passage. As Dorothy followed her, I followed them both, and soon we had reached the center.

It was different from the last time I’d seen it. Instead of the tiny cobblestone sitting area, with a tiny bench and a modest, sort of dirty fountain, we stepped through the bushes onto a giant, deserted plaza. The fountain at the center was now ornate and stately, with gorgeous, twisting designs carved into a huge marble basin, from which jets of water poured forth.

Standing next to it was the Wizard.

“Right on time,” the Wizard said, seeing Dorothy make her entrance. He flipped his pocket watch closed and tucked it into his lapel. “I knew I could count on you, Your Highness. You’ve always had a way of getting what you want. The only trick is making you think you want it.”

“Shut up, you stupid old man,” Dorothy snapped. “I’m not here to play your games. Step aside, so I can finally do what I should have done years ago—destroy that horrible place once and for all.”

The Wizard just smirked. “But can you?” he asked.

“Enough with your insolence,” Dorothy said, slapping him across the face so hard that the sound echoed across the plaza. “Do what I say and prepare the ritual you promised me, before I decide to stop being so kind.”